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Brit who took free US Metro papers to more than a million dies at 50

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

July 20, 2013 | 3 min read

British journalist Tony Metcalf who, after 18 years as a reporter and editor at the Northern Echo, went on to make his mark in free newspapers worldwide, has died at a hospice in Darlington age 50 from colon cancer.

Metcalf: King of the free papers

The death of Metcalf, editor in chief of Metro US, published in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, attracted obituaries this weekend in the New York Times the Boston Globe and the New York Daily News.

Metcalf was a rising star in the free-newspaper empire of Metro International, a spinoff of a Swedish media company that started its first free newspaper in Stockholm in 1995, said the New York Times. Metro International now publishes about 100 papers in 27 countries.

Starting in 2000 as editor of the company’s first giveaway newspaper in Newcastle , the short-lived Metro Newcastle - no connection wi the Daily Mail group papers of the same name - Tony was named global editor in chief in 2001.

He was sent to start similar newspapers in cities , including Toronto, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Hong Kong and Seoul. All are still operating, said the NYT.

Named editor of Metro US in 2008, he described the target readership as “the hard-to-reach metropolitan” — the young, employed city dweller more apt to get news online or from TV.

"Articles can easily be read between stops, running about 300 words each," said the NYT.

Metro US said that under his leadership, the three American dailies’ readership had grown to about one million at a time when the newspaper industry as a whole had lost vast numbers of readers.

The NYT said he was "a committed purveyor of journalistic Britishisms." He egged on on overworked staff with compliments and other noncash rewards. A well-done article was “a belter” or a “bobby dazzler,” staff members said. Announcing an office party, he would say he was “planning a bit of a knees up.”

He left Metro International in 2004 to edit 7Days, a free newspaper in Dubai, of which he was a part owner, before returning to the company in 2008.

He is survived by his wife, Lesley; two children, Alex and Freya; and a brother and a sister.

His most animated encounter with American readers, said the Times, came when he ran a Reuters article on European revulsion at Americans celebrating the killing of Osama bin Laden. Readers were angry and in some cases threatening.

Metcalf wrote on the Metro editor’s blog: “Democratic states do not execute people without first going through the judicial process. If that process is circumvented, then you are no better than the terrorists.”

He added: “I defy you to argue with that logic.”

Metcalf was a regular Tweeter. In March he tweeted,

"Am in hospital. Obstruction of small bowel. Nowt serious. Ok."

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